


Again, for a Lifetime

by shinealightrose



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Kisses, M/M, Vague fantasy, dragon hybrid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-13 13:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12984864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightrose/pseuds/shinealightrose
Summary: Baekhyun lives somewhere between the valley and peaks of the mountain, and he doesn't live alone.





	Again, for a Lifetime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hanijima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanijima/gifts).



> Holiday Fic Project #2

A fire blazes from the hearth inside the storefront tavern. A light dusting of snow blows in with the opening of the heavy wooden door. The fire dances in the breeze, the door is shut, and it stops. Two customers at the bar glance towards the newcomer, pausing between their cups of hard ale. Another group of resting travelers lift their eyes momentarily from their card game, give the stranger a wary once-over, then resume their game. The tavern owner nods once and says nothing. He’s neither pleased nor alarmed. Nothing to see here today, just a quarterly customer from up the mountains who minds his own business three hundred and sixty days a year except when he treks down for supplies.

Baekhyun hums, content with this arrangement.

“Morning, Kyungsoo,” he tells the owner.

“Back again, already, I guess,” says the man with no ounce of enthusiasm. “What’ll it be this time? Rice, salt, lye, the usual stuff?”

“Ah, throw in a sack of sugar, and some apples if you’ve got ‘em.” Baekhyun winks and gives the owner his best grin which is guaranteed to win him all the gents and all the ladies. On Kyungsoo it never quite seems to work.

“Sugar I have, but no apples.”

“Saw your orchards on my way down the mountain few months ago. The last of your summer crop sure looked good. No doubt you’ve got ‘em barrelled away for a special occasion. Mm?”

Kyungsoo grunts.

“Pay you double?”

Again, he grunts, but Baekhyun already knows he’s going to cave. “I’ll sell you two dozen at a price and half _if_ you dig them up for me yourself and haul another two barrells over to the press.”

“It’s a deal!”

He sets about the hard labor dutifully while Kyungsoo gathers up the rest of his supplies. Baekhyun’s body may look lean and wiry, but he’s lived this kind of life since the day he was born, a mountain boy through and through.

This chore done and out of the way, he leans up by the bar counting his coins while waiting on Kyungsoo. Customers like him are sparse on a good day, but with winter coming there’ll be more travellers stopping in for a bit of warmth, bringing with them their tales of the road. He listens in to a few now. He notes with some relief that the war in the next province seems to be coming to a close. There’s a mild famine out east, and a new assortment of armed bandits on the roads to the south. Someone’s wife in a village down the road gave birth to a baby with six toes; the usual gossip.

“That’s an abomination,” says one of the men by the fire.

“Yeah,” says his companion, “but have you heard the real stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“Seems they saw a dragon flying about.”

Another traveler whistles. “Naaah. Ain’t no way. Them thing’s been dead for centuries.”

“But it’s true. Saw one myself just three days ago.”

One of the men laughs. “Saw a shadow in the valley probably and wet yourself in fright.”

“I been telling him to lay off the ale for months now, and see what my good advice has produced? Nothing but bedtime stories to scare the wee babies.”

Baekhyun drums his fingers impatiently on the bar just as Kyungsoo comes through the door to the back room. Their eyes meet, and neither says a thing.

A moment later, “Here’s your victuals, rice bag’s out front already by your mule. You don’t need any coal chips, right?”

“Nah, got that covered,” Baekhyun replies.

Kyungsoo grunts. “Right, whatever. Fine,” he lowers his voice, “now get out of here and tell your uhh… friend that he needs to lay low for a few days or, I don’t know, maybe forever.”

Baekhyun slips his golden coins across the counter, smiling through a grimace. “Thanks, Soo, you’re a pal.”

“Don’t mention it, ever,” whines the tavern owner. But Baekhyun is already halfway out the door.

It’s a three down journey down the mountain by mule. Going up with all his supplies, five if he pushes it. Baekhyun makes it in four and by the time he’s knocking down the door of his cabin his body is aching, starving for good food, thirsty, and smelling rank.

“Hey sweet cheeks, I’m home,” he calls out to an empty house, if a person can call it that. There are two main rooms, one for living and one for sleeping, plus a cellar, a shed, and an outhouse. Both rooms are dark like they haven’t been occupied in a week.

“Damn, fucking beast,” Baekhyun curses, dropping his rucksack and hauling in the goods. His mule brays once when he ties her up, and for the rest of day that’s his only sound of comfort. He spends his time wisely though, airing the windows, sweeping the floors, even melting a bucket of snow with some soup to give the floors a good clean mop down. He scoffs when he gets over to the stone fireplace, annoyed to see new scorch marks before the grate and a couple planks of blackened, soot covered wall fixtures. Living in a wooden cabin like he does has always been a bit dangerous, but this is a new level entirely. “I’ll kill him,” he promises angrily. “Thinks he can burn down my hut while I’m not even here. Hah!”

And still there’s no one to answer him.

For supper he makes a pot of porridge, irritable from the waste of coal, but he sits around the hearth and warms his hands, filling his belly, and at bedtime he pulls down his thickest wool blanket and buries himself inside.

  


Come morning he wakes to a great _thoooomph!_ from outside. Snow and icicles crumble off the rooftop. The whole mountain seems to shake. Baekhyun jumps out of his blankets in an instant, curses once, then grabs the fallen blanket and pulls it over his shoulders. Still shivering, but excited, he marches to the door.

Someone else, however, opens it first.

“Baekhyun!” cries a tall young man, relief so palpable he’s grinning from ear to ear.

Baekhyun socks him right in the gut.

“Ow, wait, what?!”

Baekhyun socks him again.

“You idiot! You oaf!” he shouts, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. “You fucking, careless, annoying, beast! I was gone for a week and you try to burn down my house?!”

“What? Wait, what did I do?”

Two strong arms are suddenly grabbing onto Baekhyun’s shoulders and pushing him back inside. Baekhyun fights him, knowing that regardless of what he does, his efforts will be futile. For one, Baekhyun is never going to win against Kris’ size and strength, and two, he’s got practically no fight in him anymore. Not when those two strong arms let go and wrap around him instead.

Baekhyun sobs into his chest, fists balled up and pounding weakly.

“Baekhyun? Baek? Baekhyun?” says the man with increasing worry. “Baekhyun, what’s wrong? I’m so happy to see you, but why are you crying?”

Baekhyun shakes his head and sniffles. He refuses to answer, opting instead to relax his fists and wrap them around Kris’s warm body. He stays snuggled like that for a long while, would gladly remain there forever. But Kris is still demanding an answer and Baekhyun can’t really deny him for long.

“Baek, are you mad I wasn’t here to greet you when you got home? Is that it? Or… Oh, oh I see. Are you mad about the scorch marks? Baek, I didn’t mean to. I was just, I was lonely and you were gone and I was annoyed I couldn’t go with you and, and... I admit I got a little careless. But hey look, no lasting harm done, right? Right?!”

Baekhyun pulls back and pummels him one last time for good measure.

“Kris, you’re one dumb fucking idiot, but do you really think I’m mad about the burn marks?”

A streak of confusion passes over the man’s face, like he can’t quite believe what Baekhyun is or isn’t saying.

“You’re… not?”

Wiping his eyes, Baekhyun turns around and steps out of Kris’s reach. His sniffs one last time. “I’m not. But Kris, we talked about this.” He busies himself with folding and refolding a small pile of rags on table, a mindless activity for a mindful man.

“Talked about… you mean…”

“You were _seen_ , Kris. By someone in the valley.” Kris follows him across the room, guilt now blasted across his face. He takes the rags from Baekhyun’s hand, setting them aside. “You can’t keep doing things like this,” says Baekhyun. “What if people stop believing they’re _only_ seeing things? What if enough people get scared they send up a party to come look for you?”

“Then they won’t find me.”

Baekhyun huffs and tries once again to pull out of range. But Kris is persistent, and penitent. He takes Baekhyun’s hands in his and brings them up to his lips, bending a little to kiss his knuckles. The softness of his lips, the gentleness of the touch is enough to set Baekhyun to fluttering. He pushes that feeling aside and looks away. He can’t bear to remove his hands though.

“That’s what your ancestors said too, Kris.”

“They won’t find me,” repeats the dragon. “I won’t do it again. I won’t go anywhere near the valley. I’ll only fly between the peaks, on the other side of the mountain. Promise.”

Baekhyun can’t stop him from making this promise, can’t stop him either when he’s leaning down and kissing Baekhyun full on the lips. And unlike the first kiss which barely grazed his skin, this one is heavier, hungrier. Baekhyun surrenders to the full force that is Kris, a dragon born of fire, and passion, and love.

“I was cold last night,” says Baekhyun, breaking away before being engulfed once more.

“You won’t be tonight, I promise.”

“Kris…”

“They won’t.”

  
  


Two decades ago there was a little boy, wandering the mountain and wasting away his time. Born of two loving parents, he found another little orphan boy. And he couldn’t understand why that orphan could not, would not trust a single human being. Except for him.

He took him home. He gave him food. He gave him shelter, and comfort, and love. He gave him clothes, and he gave him a friend. In return, he got the best friend a boy, or a man, could never expect.

  
  


“Kris! No!!! What are you….! What are you!! doing!!!?” shouts Baekhyun, his lungs full of burning cold air, and a fire lit deep in his gut. He screams, and laughs, and he hold on tight, fingers gripped like claws on the scaly body beneath him. His thighs ache as he clenches them in fear around the rippling muscles of the dragon as it soars through the air.

“I”m flying!!!!!!!” he screeches, again and again, and again.

Then the dragon swoops, and careens past the mountain peak, and a panorama of all the world Baekhyun had never known comes into view. And it positively takes his breath away.

“Kris! It’s amazing!!” he shouts, again and again, and again. “It’s! I don’t know! It’s! Beautiful! You’re beautiful!”

Valleys and meadows and the rich evergreen forest swerve and tumble from view as the dragon drops low beneath the ridgeline of the mountain, on the other side of the mountain, the safe side. The side where no human has dared to scale and can barely dream of crossing in any other way. Only Baekhyun can, and only because he has Kris.

“Take me down,” he cries out, hoping his voice actually carries. “I’m done, I think I’m gonna be sick actually. Kris, down, down please I think…”

But the dragon is already descending, slowing its flight. It’s great, magnanimous wings flutter up, and its body slows even further until Kris brings them down in a secluded meadow quite far from where they lived. Baekhyun doesn’t care. He rolls off the dragon as soon as could be, gasping for breath with tears in his eyes for the sheer joy of life.

He closes his eyes, smelling the earth, feeling the grass beneath his hands and the sun on the face, and the steady, rumbling breath of the most wonderful creature alive. The dragon purrs, and a fume of smoke escapes from its nostrils, and there is the smell of char and ashes before the dragon disappears altogether. And in its place lies a man who wastes no time at all. He rolls over Baekhyun and shields him from view, his elbows a cage around the other’s torso before he kisses him, again and again, and again.

“You’re never going to get used to that, are you?” he asks finally, after the quivers in Baekhyun’s stomach have only partially settled down.

“What, flying with you?”

Kris nods, and Baekhyun has to smile.

“No. But that’s the best part of it, yeah? I’m never going to get _used_ to you. And I don’t want to, ever, just become _used_ to you.”

He kisses Kris again then, before he can ask what Baekhyun means. Already the confusion is there, that slight strain in his browline. Baekhyun loves how it softens his entire face, otherwise severe, but Baekhyun knows differently.

“I want it to take a lifetime,” he says, and they kiss again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
